The first was news that the Iowa Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman has eliminated virtually all travel by its employees to nursing homes and assisted living centers across the state.

The reason given was deep budget cuts forced on the agency by the Iowa Legislature this year. The agency operates on a state budget of $1.3 million, plus $400,000 from the federal government. Lawmakers cut the budget by about $500,000.

The agency responded by eliminating travel, the biggest expense after salaries. Last fiscal year, employees made 5,000 visits to Iowa care facilities. This fiscal year, which began July 1, those visits won’t be made.

The ombudsman’s staff won’t be meeting with residents of care centers and talking with their relatives. The ombudsman’s staff won’t be able to investigate complaints of abuse or neglect of these seniors in person. They won’t be able to provide training to workers in the care centers.

A friend of mine, John Hale, is an advocate for senior citizens. His reaction to the budget cuts was blistering.

“The Iowans charged with protecting the health, safety and rights of residents in Iowa nursing homes can no longer go to these places in person to thoroughly investigate complaints and fully advocate for residents,” Hale told the Des Moines Register.

“I refuse to accept that there is no money available to fund such essential services.”

Iowans should be furious about this, too. Our state has one of the highest percentages of senior citizens. The 53,000 people who live in care centers are our parents, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents, and family friends.

Even before the ombudsman’s budget was gutted, Iowa ranked last among the states in the percentage of nursing homes the ombudsman’s staff visited each quarter. Just 12 percent of nursing homes received a visit. Embarrassingly, the national average was 67 percent.

This isn’t the only area of the state budget affecting vulnerable Iowans that suffered massive cuts from the Legislature this year.

Funding was eliminated for public health programs for people diagnosed with epilepsy and for children with autism. Money was eliminated for programs that provided vision screenings in our schools and hearing aids for children (unlike many states, Iowa does not require health insurers to cover these costs).

Remember what John Hale said. “I refuse to accept that there is no money available to fund such essential services.”

He is correct. State government has the money. The issue is how officials have chosen to use that money.

Through actions by the Legislature, the state has 373 different tax credits, tax exemptions, deductions and exclusions that help businesses and people reduce their tax bills. Those have drained $12 billion in potential state revenue each year from Iowa’s $7 billion state budget.

We saw an example of one of those ways last week.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority and city of Waukee provided $213 million in tax incentives to Apple Inc., the giant electronics company, in return for building a computer data center in the Des Moines suburb.

These incentives have become just another form of welfare — corporate welfare. But instead of going to businesses that need help, Iowa hands out these freebies to companies that are fully capable of paying their own way.

Consider Apple:

The company has annual revenues of about $220 billion. Iowa’s state government, on the other hand, collects about $9 billion per year.

And while the state scrambled to chop millions of dollars from the budget to finish the 2015-16 fiscal year in the black, Apple is setting on a savings account that totals about $250 billion.

That means you could operate Iowa state government for 35 years just with the money Apple has on hand today.

The data center will cost $1.4 billion to build and equip. Fifty people will work there and will make an average of $29 per hour. Fifty jobs. The typical Hy-Vee supermarket employs that many people full-time.

Many Iowa businesses must pay the state’s 6 percent sales tax whenever they buy a computer. Apple won’t have to pay sales tax on thousands of computer servers that will fill its data center.

That one gift alone will save Apple $36 million.

But that $36 million in lost state tax revenue is one reason there won’t be representatives from the long-term care ombudsman visiting nursing homes and other care centers in Iowa this year.

Gov. Kim Reynolds views the incentives for Apple differently. “These are credits,” she said. “It’s not a check.”

But the governor, like her predecessors, both Ds and Rs, fails to acknowledge what the chairman of the Iowa House Appropriations Committee knows to be true. Representative Pat Grassley, a Republican, said lawmakers need to revisit these tax credits and other tax carve-outs because they are eating away at the state’s tax revenues.

These handouts to some of the biggest and wealthiest corporations are preventing the state from looking out for some of the neediest and most vulnerable people in our state.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/08/31/is-this-what-we-want-from-our-state/feed/0Public Safety Needs To Come Firsthttp://iowawatch.org/2017/08/17/public-safety-needs-to-come-first/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/08/17/public-safety-needs-to-come-first/#respondThu, 17 Aug 2017 10:00:18 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=100700Don’t come knocking on my door looking for support for the Trump administration’s latest effort to get rid of what the president likes to call job-killing regulations.

Why?

I will answer that question, but first let me tell you about my brother-in-law, Jim.

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

He grew up in Cedar Rapids. He served in the Army in Vietnam and received his business degree from the University of Northern Iowa.

Jim was never someone who shied away from hard work. He was always thinking about other people and their needs before he would think about himself.

In Vietnam, helicopter gunships were an important mode of transportation through the jungles. Door gunners on those choppers were vital members of the flight crew.

When he came back from the war, Jim’s family was not surprised to learn that in Vietnam, on days when he could have been safely on the ground back at his base, he would volunteer to sub for door-gunner friends to give them a break from the stressful work.

I got to know Jim a decade later, after the war. But that anecdote from Vietnam tells you volumes about how Jim lived and worked.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that family came first for Jim. There are dozens of photo albums in his home in Illinois that are filled with wonderful pictures of family vacations — the fishing, camping and sightseeing trips across the United States with his wife and their kids loaded in the family van.

He was a devoted father for his four kids and their soccer, their running and their basketball. He was a wonderful companion for his wife, Bobbi. But whenever his mother, a widow, needed help with some handyman task, Jim was back in Cedar Rapids tools in hand.

That brings me to the afternoon of May 11, 2009, and why I think the Trump administration’s wholesale push to rescind many regulations is so shortsighted and ill advised.

Jim and Bobbi and their golden retriever Chase were driving back home from one of those trips to Cedar Rapids. They were on Interstate Highway 80, just a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River at LeClaire, when a semi-trailer truck rammed into the rear of their van and another car.

The truck driver failed to slow for a construction zone — in spite of those orange signs posted for several miles warning of the slower speed limit ahead.

Jim and the driver of the car were killed. Bobbi was seriously injured. And Chase also died.

Let me tell you about one of those “job-killing regulations” Trump wiped off the books just a few weeks ago.

The regulation was proposed last year by President Barack Obama. It would require trucking companies and railroads to screen their drivers and train engineers for a respiratory disorder called sleep apnea that is becoming more common as obesity becomes more prevalent.

The medical condition leads some people to experience daytime drowsiness and to nod off while working. When you are driving a 40-ton truck or operating a train, dozing off can have catastrophic consequences for innocent people.

But the Trump administration says regulations like this one are harming economic growth. Of course, the death of a father/husband certainly harms his family’s economic growth — and has lasting effects on his kids, and grandchildren, who lose out on countless experiences with a wonderful guy.

Medical experts say sleep apnea affects about 10 percent of people. That’s one in every 10 truckers you pass. One in 10 trains.

It’s a frightening statistic to leave to the railroads or trucking companies to self-police.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the Trump administration decision to rescind the regulation was disappointing because the mandatory sleep apnea screening is much-needed in “safety-sensitive transportation occupations.”

How has self-policing worked?

Ask the families of the four people who were killed, and the 60 people who were injured, when a commuter train crashed in New York City in 2013. The engineer — diagnosed afterward with sleep apnea — took his train into a 30 mph curve at an astonishing 82 mph.

Sarah Feinberg, the head of the Federal Railroad Administration under President Obama, said of Trump’s decision to rescind the sleep apnea screening requirements:

“It’s very hard to argue that people aren’t being put at risk. We cannot have someone who is in that condition operating either a train going 70 mph or a multi-ton truck traveling down the interstate.

“It’s just not an appropriate level of risk to be exposing passengers and the traveling public to.”

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/08/17/public-safety-needs-to-come-first/feed/0A City’s Solution To A Nonexistent Problemhttp://iowawatch.org/2017/08/10/a-citys-solution-to-a-nonexistent-problem/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/08/10/a-citys-solution-to-a-nonexistent-problem/#respondThu, 10 Aug 2017 11:00:13 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=99481The cost of sending kids to college has been climbing faster than people’s incomes. So a Michigan mother’s way of coping with that troubling trend has drawn considerable attention.

Her “solution” is worth our examination, given the controversial direction Iowa’s second-largest city is heading. More about that shortly.

Lori Truex is a school bus driver in Battle Creek, Mich. Her husband is a factory worker. Their youngest daughter, Kendall, is heading to Michigan State University this fall after spending two years at home while attending community college.

Once her bus-driving ended for the summer, Lori Truex’s full-time summer “job” has been to stand at street corners in Battle Creek for at least eight hours a day. She holds an assortment of neatly lettered signs:

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

The Truex family took on a big dose of debt when they last sent a kid off to college. You can’t blame them for wanting to avoid that this time — even if it means resorting to panhandling.

Experts caution parents about the dangers of tapping into their retirement savings to pay for a child’s college education. But what parent wants to see that child graduate with a student loan debt that is the size of a home mortgage a generation or two ago?

In-state tuition, room and board, plus books costs $29,500 a year at Michigan State. A couple of grants have reduced the Truex family’s share of those costs to the $24,152 figure shown on the sign.

Kendall’s summer job as a lifeguard isn’t going to make that financial burden disappear. But to date, Lori Truex’s fundraising has brought in about half of what the family needs for Kendall’s fall semester.

Lori Truex told a reporter midway through her unusual summer: “I truly feel so blessed. Everyone has been so kind, so generous. This is out of my comfort zone, but you do what you have to do for your kids.”

While the mom’s approach is certainly creative, her actions would land her in legal hot water if she were doing this in Cedar Rapids. That’s because the city is moving to make such street-side solicitations a crime there — a crime punishable by 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $625.

Cedar Rapids officials say they are trying to protect pedestrian safety — although they are unable to point to any rash of accidents to show panhandling is a danger.

Officials’ true motivation is obscured by only a thin layer of road dust: They want to chase away panhandlers, especially those who claim to be unemployed or homeless.

City leaders aren’t enamored with perceptions their community has a problem with poverty or homelessness. Having unshaven people in tattered clothes begging isn’t the image the city wants.

But there is a big problem trying to outlaw panhandling: Federal courts across the United States have ruled that you cannot do that, because soliciting money is one form of free speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

It doesn’t matter what the cause is — your favorite charity, your favorite political candidate. Nor does it matter if your favorite cause is you.

There’s another problem with Cedar Rapids’ efforts to legislate away panhandlers. Besides the homeless and the hungry that use this fundraising technique, the planned ordinance would affect a popular and successful fundraising campaign.

For the past 32 years, Cedar Rapids firefighters have stood at intersections holding their big rubber boots in the days leading up to Labor Day. The firefighters’ “fill the boot” campaign raises thousands of dollars each year to help support the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

The proposed ordinance forbids pedestrians to “sit, walk, stand or enter” certain busy intersections. Elsewhere in the city, the ordinance would forbid pedestrians from walking onto a street “for the purpose of entering a private vehicle or exchanging anything with an occupant of a vehicle.”

And the ordinance would prohibit pedestrians from standing on a median between lanes of traffic for more than one traffic light cycle.

The ordinance says it is not intended to prevent anyone from exercising free speech rights by soliciting money. That’s true. Nothing would stop someone from holding a sign asking for money.

But the ordinance prevents them from stepping into a street to accept money from a driver or passenger — even if the money is collected in a firefighter’s boot or in a container held by the creative mother of a college student.

There are already plenty of laws on the books that can be used to punish people who engage in harassment or block traffic. To me, this is one of those government solutions in search of a problem.

I’m no expert on presidential oratory, but I think the president’s speech last week to the National Jamboree of the Boy Scouts of America was a missed opportunity. The speech could have benefited from a do-over.

If I were delivering that speech, I would have used a do-over to focus on the audience there in West Virginia, not on the crowds that have attended the president’s past rallies across the U.S.

This audience was upwards of 40,000 Boy Scouts. This wasn’t an arena filled with Donald Trump’s adult fans and fanatics.

This was a crowd waiting to be inspired and motivated. This wasn’t a crowd that came for the usual doses of Trump rallying lines.

It took no effort for the president to dip into his speech file and grab his past go-to lines about the size of his election victory, or how the victory surprised many people and the TV pundits.

While he was talking about “fake news” and cocktail parties attended by “the hottest people,” the president missed a chance to focus the attention of the Scouts and their leaders, and the broader TV audience, on these teenagers who will be tomorrow’s leaders.

If I were giving the speech, I would have started by thanking the tens of thousands of Scout leaders, all volunteers, who give freely of their time to motivate and inspire young boys who are on their way to becoming young gentlemen. I would have told them about my cousin in Independence, Mo., who has been a Scout leader for more than 50 years.

Back when I was a Cub Scout down in Bloomfield it was our mothers who organized the meetings. By the time I moved up to the Boy Scouts, men like Veryl Arnold, Fred Lundstrom and H.B. Gentry were the ones who kept us focused on learning new skills while always remembering to honor our flag and our nation.

I still remember being in a swarm of Scouts who planted thousands of trees at Lake Wapello. Veryl Arnold taught us about the various species of pine trees we were putting into the soil.

One of my proud accomplishments was bringing home three or four extra trees and nurturing them, first in flower pots inside during the winter and then in our yard. I was able — with help from Mother Nature, of course — to turn those 6-inch seedlings into 25-footers by the time I was out in the working world.

If I were giving that speech to the National Jamboree, instead of bragging about the election victory last November, I would have talked about two words that guide all Scouts: Be prepared.

I would have told them about 93 boys and two dozen leaders, adults and teenagers, who were camping at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in western Iowa on the evening of June 11, 2008.

They were there for a leadership training program. But the ultimate test of their leadership came that evening when a tornado, one of 28 to ravage the Midwest, gnawed its way through the camp. Four Scouts lost their lives; 48 other people were injured.

But in the midst of the devastation, chaos and fear, the Scouts’ training kicked in and they knew what to do. If I were president, I would have told the National Jamboree that one of the biggest tragedies to hit the Boy Scouts of America actually was one of Scouting’s finest hours.

These boys — ranging from 13 to 18 years — immediately jumped into action while waiting for professional rescuers to reach the camp.

The Scouts dug their friends out from under the rubble and assessed their injuries. They used their shirts to make tourniquets to stop the most serious bleeding. They did CPR to restart the breathing of the most seriously injured.

I would remind the jamboree crowd of what the fire chief from nearby Blencoe said about the Little Sioux Scout Ranch that evening: “It’s the Scouts that saved a lot of lives. The Scouts did exactly what they were trained to do.”

I would tell the Scouts about one of the boys killed there, Aaron Eilerts, 14, of Eagle Grove. Scouts are encouraged to do good deeds, and that certainly was how Aaron lived in his life. Each year since the Little Sioux tragedy, by proclamation of Iowa’s governor, Iowans are encouraged to honor Aaron by participating in the Aaron Eilerts Day of Service and Giving.

Had I been speaking at the jamboree, these are the things I would have talked about. These would have been more important for the Scouts to hear than his belief about the unfairness of the Electoral College or his take on the failings of his predecessor or the need to kill Obamacare.

The Scouts needed to hear that with all of the challenges our nation faces, we need more young men like them with the values and character and can-do attitude that are found in Boy Scouts.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/08/03/this-is-what-the-scouts-deserved-to-hear/feed/0Lack Of Transparency Isn’t Helping With Trusthttp://iowawatch.org/2017/07/27/lack-of-transparency-isnt-helping-with-trust/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/07/27/lack-of-transparency-isnt-helping-with-trust/#respondThu, 27 Jul 2017 14:00:38 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=97584Much of the relationship between the people and their governments is built on trust.

But that relationship is fragile — especially when it appears government is going out of its way to keep the public in the dark.

That’s what is occurring in Iowa too often with video recordings made by law enforcement agencies — especially when an officer has taken someone’s life or when an officer’s actions are questioned.

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

The lack of public access to these videos is the central issue that was back in the news last week — and the Iowa Legislature needs to end these unwise policies.

The headlines last week dealt with a hearing in the case of a 34-year-old mother in Burlington who was accidentally shot by a police officer when he tried to shoot the woman’s dog as it lunged toward him. Officer Jesse Hill’s two shots missed the dog, but one bullet struck and killed Autumn Steele.

Not surprisingly, Steele’s family wants to see the police body camera and squad car dash camera videos of the incident.

The shooting occurred on Jan. 6, 2015. But two and a half years later, Burlington police, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and Attorney General Tom Miller’s office continue to resist attempts to let the family and public see the entire videos.

The Steele case is not an aberration, unfortunately.

On April 29, Matthew Rodrigues, 27, was arrested outside a West Des Moines motel after a woman staying there reported being sexually assaulted in her room by a Hispanic man known as Junior who wore a shirt with “Houston” on the front. The attacker was a guest at the motel, the victim said, and she met him in the lobby.

Rodrigues said he had been visiting a friend at the motel when police officers approached him. He denied being involved and accused officers of detaining him only because of his skin color. His two companions could corroborate his alibi, he said, but officers told them to leave.

Rodrigues spent 11 days in jail. He was released after a judge dismissed the sexual assault charge.

A man from Houston, Texas, was charged with the crime the same day Rodrigues was freed. The other man’s middle name is Junior, officials said, and he had been staying at the motel while working on a construction project in the area.

Rodrigues and his lawyer believe police ended their investigation too hastily after officers saw Rodrigues, a brown-skinned man, outside the motel. He says the surveillance video from the motel lobby would corroborate that he never met the victim there.

Police have refused to make available that video or any police videos of the encounter because they are part of an ongoing investigation.

On July 5, a woman with a history of drug use was shot to death by a Des Moines police officer. Tiffany Potter, 29, was being followed for reasons police have declined to make public. She was shot after trying to flee on foot from her car. The officer fired after Potter first fired a gun she had.

Put yourself in the shoes of Potter’s mother, Gena Behle: Her daughter is dead; she knows her daughter had drug problems; she just wants to see for herself what occurred that tragic night.

Officers initially told Behle she could watch the videos. But when she said a lawyer would accompany her, police changed their minds and told her she would have to wait until their investigation ended in four to six weeks.

Police declined requests from journalists to make public the body camera and dash camera videos. In Des Moines, police typically have released such videos at the conclusion of an investigation after a grand jury clears an officer of any criminal actions.

Here we have three Iowa cases that all involve police videos, but there is no consistent public access to these recordings.

Autumn Steele’s family has waited two and a half years with no guarantee they will ever get to see the recordings of her death. Tiffany Potter’s family has been told they will have to wait four to six weeks to see them, but the public has no assurance it will ever get to view the recordings. And police have brushed away requests for the recordings that Matthew Rodrigues believes will remove the stain on his name from his arrest and jailing for a sex crime he did not commit.

The public is grateful for the important service Iowa’s law officers provide every day. But that gratitude should not prevent us from asking questions from time to time about officers’ actions, and Iowans certainly deserve to have access to video recordings of incidents in which officers take people’s lives.

Next year, the Legislature needs to revise Iowa’s public records law to provide for consistent access statewide to police videos in controversial cases such as these.

Government will never build and maintain public confidence in our law officers by allowing this secrecy to remain. Transparency should be mandatory — not optional — when officers’ actions are questioned.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/07/27/lack-of-transparency-isnt-helping-with-trust/feed/0‘Speed Limit Phenomenon’ In Governmenthttp://iowawatch.org/2017/07/14/speed-limit-phenomenon-in-government/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/07/14/speed-limit-phenomenon-in-government/#respondFri, 14 Jul 2017 14:00:18 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=94563My wife and I were driving down Interstate Highway 80 on Sunday, and we experienced one of the cardinal rules of law-making. You don’t read about this in the textbooks. But it’s as certain as death and taxes.

The rule amounts to this: When politicians give us something, it’s not long before we want more of the same.

On Sunday, we were humming along at 70 miles per hour. Even at that speed, more cars and trucks were passing us than we were passing.

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

I’m old enough to remember when the nation grudgingly went to “double nickels” — a national 55 mph speed limit to conserve fuel in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

A decade later, Congress allowed a 65 mph limit on rural sections of limited-access roads like Interstate 80. By the mid-1990s, the national speed limit was gone, and it once again was left to the individual states to set the limit on their roads.

The result was obvious Sunday. While the speed limit is 70 mph, many drivers had their own higher speed limit.

Of course, that was the case 40 years ago, too, during the double-nickel years. But the driver who disregarded 55 back then probably didn’t dare to travel more than 60 or 65 for fear of the consequences if a state trooper happened along.

It’s the same today, although drivers’ personal speed limits have moved incrementally higher.

State Sen. Brad Zaun of Urbandale pushed this year for the Iowa Legislature to increase the limit on rural interstate highways to 75 mph. If his bill becomes law, you can be certain the motorist who now travels 75 to 80 mph will be going 80 to 85 under the higher speed limit.

This rule of the speed limit applies to our dealings with government in other areas of life. As restrictions are lessened, there is a push for even fewer restrictions.

You see this in a variety of areas, including guns, government aid to businesses and fireworks.

As Congress and state legislatures make it easier for people to buy and carry guns, lawmakers’ efforts have not satisfied shooters any more than raising the speed limit from 55 to 65 satisfied drivers.

Iowa enacted tough limits on individuals’ use of fireworks in 1938, following disastrous fires in 1931 and 1936. The fires started from careless use of fireworks and leveled large sections of Spencer and Remsen.

Eighty businesses were destroyed in Spencer. Thirty-eight businesses and 15 homes were lost in Remsen.

After the 1938 law, Iowans had to limit their fireworks enjoyment to their own use of sparklers and “snakes” and to shows put on by professionals. Yes, there were people who ignored the law, just like the speed limit, and went to other states to buy illicit fireworks.

OK, I confess that a half century ago, the Evans boys and our dad drove to Lancaster, Mo., every year and bought small firecrackers called “lady fingers,” a few pop-bottle rockets, a box or two of sparklers and a Roman candle or two.

We waited impatiently for the Fourth of July to arrive. By dusk on the Fourth, the family’s holiday celebration was over for the year.

When the fireworks ban was lifted by the Legislature this spring, you would think that allowing Iowans to eliminate the across-the-border trips and buy their supplies locally would provide satisfaction.

That wasn’t the case. The speed limit phenomenon was present.

Instead of bombs bursting in air and rockets’ red glare confined to a few hours on a few days surrounding the Fourth, this year’s extravaganza began well before July 4 and lasted for days. On the night of the Fourth in Des Moines, the smoke was so thick and hung in the air like fog for so long that an air quality alert was issued.

But don’t be surprised if proponents of fireworks are back at the Legislature next spring, pushing for a longer fireworks “season” and for fewer restrictions on when and where fireworks can be sold and used.

We’ve seen the speed limit phenomenon with economic development assistance, too.

Forty years ago, when Iowa government was getting involved in economic development, the assistance typically consisted of building roads or extending utilities to sites for new factories.

That was adequate until the demand for more began. Now the state and local governments provide no-interest loans, forgive property taxes, refund sales taxes and give grants to woo businesses.

Compressor Controls Corp. is spending $434,000 to remodel its headquarters offices in Urbandale. The taxpayers of Iowa, whose state government is struggling to balance the books, gave the company a grant for $32,500.

Voya Financial Inc., a Fortune 500 company, is moving its offices three blocks in downtown Des Moines. This $11 billion business is receiving $553,000 in tax credits and sales tax refunds from the state, and Des Moines is providing discounted parking worth about $625,000.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/07/14/speed-limit-phenomenon-in-government/feed/0Things Don’t Add Up With This Proposalhttp://iowawatch.org/2017/07/07/things-dont-add-up-with-this-proposal/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/07/07/things-dont-add-up-with-this-proposal/#respondFri, 07 Jul 2017 11:00:47 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=93189Timing is everything in life.

For U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, he picked an especially poor time to pitch an idea last week.

The politician from Alpine, Utah, said it is difficult for members of Congress who are not wealthy to maintain a residence back in their home state and also have a second home or apartment in Washington, D.C.

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

Chaffetz said taxpayers should provide senators and representatives with a housing stipend of $2,500 per month — that’s $30,000 each year — to offset the extra housing expense.

I don’t want to come across as cold-hearted, but it’s hard to muster much sympathy for the men and women who serve in Congress.

Their annual salaries are $174,000. Their wealth far surpasses that of the typical Iowan. And when they leave office, they often move into even more lucrative jobs as lobbyists, business executives or corporate board members.

The salary members of Congress receive is significantly higher than the median household income in Iowa. That is $54,700 per year, the U.S. Census Bureau says.

Chaffetz has served in the U.S. House since 2009. He was re-elected last November. But he announced this spring that he was leaving office, effective June 30.

Chaffetz is married. He and his wife have three children. Two are in college; the youngest is in high school.

The family has remained back in Utah since he took office eight years ago. For most of his time in Congress, he has slept in his office on a cot.

“I really do believe Congress would be much better served if there was a housing allowance for members of Congress,” he said last week. “In today’s climate, nobody’s going to suggest or vote for a pay raise. But you shouldn’t have to be among the wealthiest of Americans to serve properly in Congress.”

Chaffetz has painted himself into a corner on this subject with his comments and his votes.

He made his proposal the same week that phone lines to U.S. Senate offices were lit up with constituents’ calling to criticize the Senate bill to overhaul Obamacare.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that bill could put health insurance out of reach financially for 22 million people. The House version of the Obamacare replacement had an even worse toll on Americans, but Chaffetz voted for that package of changes in May.

This is the same Jason Chaffetz who felt compelled this year to offer family budgeting advice for poor people.

During an interview about the House Republicans’ plans for replacing Obamacare, he said, “Americans have choices. … So maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest that in health care.”

In follow-up interviews, he didn’t back down: “People need to make a conscious choice, and I believe in self-reliance.”

Chaffetz doesn’t come out and say it directly, but his message was clear: If your money is limited, you should spend it more wisely than buying an expensive phone.

Of course, the same could be said for the Chaffetz family. Perhaps then Dad would not have had to sleep in his office for eight years.

The Chaffetz son attends the University of Virginia law school. The tuition there is $59,300 per year for out-of-state students. Back in Utah, at Brigham Young University law school, the tuition is only $12,680 per year for Mormons, which the Chaffetzes are.

The law school tuition savings would more than cover the $30,000 per year housing stipend Chaffetz wants you and me to pay.

But Chaffetz is tone deaf on iPhones and the housing stipends he advocates. He has opposed federal housing programs for low income Americans. He has opposed attempts to increase the federal minimum wage.

The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House health care bill he supported had some especially startling numbers when you think about Chaffetz’s suggestion for housing stipends.

The CBO report said a 64-year-old man with an annual income of $26,500 — that’s less than the housing stipend Chaffetz proposed — now pays $1,700 per year for a mid-level health insurance plan under Obamacare. But under the House Republican bill, the cost for that insurance would jump to between $13,600 and $16,100 per year, the CBO projected.

It’s extraordinarily difficult to explain to someone here in Iowa who lives on minimum-wage income of about $15,000 per year why a member of Congress making $174,000 should receive a housing allowance from the government that is twice as big as the minimum-wage person’s total annual income.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/07/07/things-dont-add-up-with-this-proposal/feed/0Enjoyable Memories — And Those That Are Hauntinghttp://iowawatch.org/2017/06/30/enjoyable-memories-and-those-that-are-haunting/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/06/30/enjoyable-memories-and-those-that-are-haunting/#respondFri, 30 Jun 2017 14:00:02 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=91862With the Fourth of July just around the corner, that’s a sure sign summer is here. And summer traditionally means vacation season.

A summer vacation that is riveted in my memory was in August 1962 when my parents, my two brothers and I piled into our Dodge and headed for Washington, D.C.

There were no water parks, thrill rides or giant ball of twine to tempt us. This vacation was all about history — the U.S. Capitol, the White House, monuments and memorials, Arlington National Cemetery and George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

For an 11-year-old kid who had memorized the names of President John Kennedy’s cabinet members and who stunned his teacher a year or two earlier by knowing where President Dwight Eisenhower liked to play golf (the answer: Augusta, Ga.), this trip was a certified big deal.

Walking into the rotunda of the Capitol beneath the soaring dome, I was in awe thinking about the important issues that had been debated and voted on in this very building.

Looking down from the gallery onto the floor of the House of Representatives, this boy from Bloomfield was thrilled to see another guy from Bloomfield, Rep. John Kyl, standing on the floor of this great chamber.

My parents were Democrats; John Kyl was a Republican. But politics didn’t matter on that August day in 1962. This was about patriotism and respect for our government and for the people who were looking out for us there in the nation’s capital.

My parents were Democrats because of the Great Depression. Lots of people looked upon President Franklin Roosevelt almost with reverence. He steered the country through the social and economic catastrophe that was the Depression. He guided us through the cataclysmic events of World War II.

When I was a kid, people talked about voting for the person, not the party. Thus, Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and a hero from World War II, coasted into the White House with victories in 1952 and 1956.

Now, too many of us side with our party, regardless of where it wants to take us.

Years after that trip to Washington, my fascination with history took me into the Library of Congress’ collection of photographs from the Great Depression. The images are from throughout the U.S., including such Iowa towns as Milford, Spencer, Shannon City and Smithland.

There are wonderful pictures from the Iowa State Fair in the 1930s and picturesque farm scenes showing tidy farm homes, outbuildings and machinery from that era.

But many photos tug at your heart and show the other side of Iowa during the Depression.

These photos show ramshackle shanties that served as houses. Many had only one or two windows and no curtains or blinds.

A series of photos from December 1936 show the Edgar Allen home near Milford, where the family of seven lived on a rented farm. The floors were bare wood planks. Clothes were piled on the floor because there was little furniture.

The Charles Benning family lived in a tiny unpainted shack near Spencer in 1936. The building was as wide as four adults standing shoulder to shoulder.

One image has lingered with me longer than all the others.

The photo shows four young children of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Pauley standing at a little table eating Christmas dinner in 1936 in a house on the farm they rented near Smithland in Woodbury County. The children are standing — the littlest is on a wooden box — because there were no chairs to sit on.

It’s hard to call the house a house. The building looked more like a shed. The unpainted interior walls were the back side of the boards that formed the exterior wall.

And it’s hard to call the Christmas meal a meal. It was potatoes, cabbage and pie.

In the 80 years since this heartbreaking photo record of the Great Depression was made, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment benefits have made scenes like these rare.

But memories of these photos bring me to today.

I worry that what our Congress is trying to accomplish now — by scaling back the Medicaid program for the poor and the elderly, by reductions in the food stamp program, and with cutbacks in other government programs serving the poorest of our neighbors — will create terrible new memories that will haunt another generation.

Memories of places like the Earl Pauley home are far removed from today’s members of Congress and our president. I doubt that was the case for my parents back in 1962 when we looked in on the U.S. House.

Pope Francis said in 2015, “The coexistence of wealth and poverty is a scandal. It is a disgrace for humanity.”

We ought to keep the pope’s wise counsel in mind as the U.S. Senate gets ready to vote on a single piece of legislation that would provide about $1 trillion, with a “t,” in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans over the next decade, while making health insurance unaffordable and out of reach for many millions of our brothers and sisters.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/06/30/enjoyable-memories-and-those-that-are-haunting/feed/0America Needs More Than Just ‘Thoughts And Prayers’http://iowawatch.org/2017/06/23/america-needs-more-than-just-thoughts-and-prayers/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/06/23/america-needs-more-than-just-thoughts-and-prayers/#respondFri, 23 Jun 2017 13:54:32 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=90997Our leaders like to remind us, and the rest of the world, too, that the United States is the most powerful nation on Earth.

Yet, the events of the past week are a reminder that the U.S. appears to be incapable of dealing effectively with some events that occur in this country.

When news flashed around the globe that a United States congressman had been gunned down by a sniper at a community baseball field outside of Washington, D.C., the first thing many commentators and members of Congress said were along the lines of, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to Congressman Steve Scalise.”

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

Some people wanted to point at liberal Democrats because of their sharp, ongoing criticism of President Donald Trump and the language he uses.

Other people wanted to point at political leaders who have supported laws and regulations that make it easier to obtain guns.

And for still other people, they wondered why more and better security isn’t available for members of Congress.

I’ve grown weary of this back-and-forth blame game.

James Hodgkinson, 66, was an opinionated home inspector from the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis. He was a Democrat, a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential campaign, and was a member of several anti-Republican groups on social media.

But that background alone is not a recipe for a crime spree. Past gunmen in mass shootings have had opposite political views.

It doesn’t matter whether these killers or would-be killers are liberal or conservative, Democrats or Republicans. It’s their extremist views — justifying in their warped minds that taking someone’s life is somehow right. That is more important than which political party they favor.

In the days after the senseless actions by Hodgkinson, one congressman said he is working with the National Rifle Association to draft legislation that would allow members of Congress and their staffs to arm themselves for protection.

There certainly is a need for discussion about how members of Congress can be better protected. We don’t need more Steve Scalises and Gabby Giffordses. But we also don’t need nervous aides pulling guns out of their suit jackets and shooting innocent constituents who walk up to a senator or representative after a boisterous town hall gathering.

Most of all, the discussion in our nation needs to move beyond protecting lawmakers. The discussion also needs to get beyond suggestions that political leaders, the media and ordinary citizens be more respectful of each other and tone down the rhetoric they direct at people with whom they disagree.

This problem is far bigger and far more serious than the Tweets and off-the-cuff comments by our president, or the blunt and impolite comments other politicians and television commentators sometimes make.

It’s about time our leaders talk in a meaningful way about how the federal government and the states can make better mental health evaluations and treatment more widely available. In Iowa, this is sadly illustrated by the shooting death of high school football coach Ed Thomas by a former player who struggled with mental illness.

It’s about time members of Congress talk seriously about the ease with which firearms can be sold without adequate background checks.

Gun advocates bristle when anyone brings up the subject of the availability of semi-automatic assault weapons like that used by the gunman in Alexandria, Virginia. Gun advocates talk about how hunters like to use these weapons.

Last week, James Hodgkinson went hunting with his semi-automatic rifle. But he was hunting Republicans, not wild animals.

The questions of safety do not just involve members of Congress and the security at their events. There are lots of people who worry about the danger to ordinary Americans from gun violence. People are justified for their anxiety over their safety and the safety of their children at school, at church, at the mall — and at baseball practice.

It’s too simplistic to think that more people carrying guns are going to make these tragic mass shootings disappear.

President Ronald Reagan was surrounded by the world’s best security detail in 1981 when he was critically wounded outside a Washington hotel.

If the Secret Service couldn’t protect the president and his press secretary from John Hinckley Jr. with dozens of highly trained and well-armed officers, why does anyone believe that a Little League baseball coach with a handgun stuck in the waistband of his pants or in his equipment bag is going to being able to protect a dozen kids on the ball diamond if a sniper like Hodgkinson shows up at practice?

It’s time that we as a nation move beyond merely offering comforting thoughts and prayers to the victims when a tragedy like the one last week occurs. It’s time that we and our government leaders begin talking about ways we can turn the tide in this alarming trend of violence.

Members of Congress, what do you suggest we do? Let’s get this conversation started now. Time is a-wasting — and so are innocent people’s lives.

]]>http://iowawatch.org/2017/06/23/america-needs-more-than-just-thoughts-and-prayers/feed/0Tax Cuts Popular; The Consequences Aren’thttp://iowawatch.org/2017/06/16/tax-cuts-popular-the-consequences-arent/
http://iowawatch.org/2017/06/16/tax-cuts-popular-the-consequences-arent/#respondFri, 16 Jun 2017 12:29:07 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=89006Iowa has had a peek at our future, but too few people have noticed.

And that’s unfortunate.

In case you missed the headlines last week, moderate Republicans in the Kansas Legislature finally became fed up with the fiscal mess created by Gov. Sam Brownback’s massive tax cuts. They joined with Democrats and reversed course in dramatic fashion.

Lawmakers voted to restore $1.2 billion in income taxes — that’s billion, with a “b” — that Brownback and the Legislature’s Republican-majority enacted in 2012.

Randy Evans

STRAY THOUGHTS

Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.

The tax cuts five years ago were based on Brownback’s belief, and the philosophy of many conservatives elsewhere, that big tax cuts and smaller government would stimulate the Kansas economy to thrive, creating tens of thousands of jobs annually.

There was a small problem with that strategy, however. The thriving economy and the job-creation numbers never materialized.

The Kansas economy grew by the paltry rate of 0.2 percent last year. By comparison, the United States economy overall grew at a rate of 1.6 percent. Kansas was 48th in the nation in job growth.

Kansans increasingly did not like what was occurring in their state after the tax cuts. They finally made their displeasure known to their state lawmakers — and at the ballot box.

That displeasure grew out of a 14 percent decline in state aid to K-12 schools, with some school districts coping by shortening their school year or by going to a four-day school week.

Citizen displeasure grew as Kansans learned more about one part of the Brownback tax-cut plan. It allowed independent contractors or owners of limited liability companies, partnerships or other “pass-through” business entities to avoid paying taxes on that income.

One beneficiary of the LLC exemption was the highest-paid employee in state government, University of Kansas basketball coach Bill Self. He receives a salary of $230,000 on which he still pays income taxes. But the rest of his $3 million in KU income is paid to an LLC that Self owns — and he owes no state income tax on that part of his income thanks to Brownback’s tax cut.

There was more that disturbed ordinary Kansans. Year after year, there were massive deficits in the state budget. Government pensions went unfunded. There was less money for Kansas’ state universities. And money was diverted from the state road fund to fill holes in other areas of the state budget.

Brownback’s strategy in 2012 has not changed, even in the face of mounting voter criticism.

It’s important Iowans remember that the Brownback strategy is similar to the principles being followed in this state by Governors Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds and by the Republicans who hold majorities in the Iowa House and Iowa Senate.

It’s also worth noting that the same Brownback philosophy — massive tax cuts, big cuts in government spending and promises of dramatic increases in job creation — mirrors proposals made by the Republican majorities in Congress and by President Donald Trump.

Rep. Don Hineman, the Republican leader of the Kansas House, explained the rationale behind the repudiation of the Brownback strategy by that state’s lawmakers: “It was time to return to a more centrist position, which is where Kansas has traditionally been governed from.”

There are important lessons for Iowa from the Kansas experiment.

After returning to the governor’s office in 2011, a Branstad priority was reducing commercial real estate taxes. He promised local governments and school districts that the state would reimburse them for the lost property tax money.

That promise took a big bite out of the state treasury, but the pledge came at a time when there was a hefty state budget surplus.

Another big hit on the Iowa treasury has come this fiscal year from the expansion in 2016 of the exemption from the state’s sales tax on goods consumed in manufacturing.

Branstad’s tax experts estimated the expanded exemption would cost the state about $21 million annually. But it now appears the true cost will be closer to $100 million.

While lawmakers in Kansas were voting this month on the huge tax increase, Gov. Reynolds has faced the unsettling projection that the state budget will be $100 million in the hole when the fiscal year ends on June 30.
Iowa law does not permit budget deficits, so Reynolds must do something this month.

She can make across-the-board cuts, which Branstad often criticized. She can call the Legislature back for a special session to make selective cuts. Or she can dip even farther into the state’s cash reserves to cover the deficit.

Kansas officials learned the hard way just how precarious such decisions can be.

While many people like tax cuts, far fewer people like the consequences of those cuts.